Tuesday, February 2, 2016

#AtheismSoWhite: Atheists of Color Rock Social Justice

SSJcon 2016 beyond #atheismsowhite

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Back in the day, supergroups ruled rock’s largely
white, largely male landscape. Megaliths
like my boys Cream, Led Zeppelin, Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills, Nash and
Young bestrode the earth in all their swaggering testosterone-oozing alpha
glory. They dominated the music charts
and arenas with power chord chestnuts which legitimized the careers of gatekeeping
white music critics and fueled a multi-billion dollar recording industry fattened
by the unsung influence of black rock trailblazers like Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck
Berry and Jimi Hendrix. Outmoded, the
supergroups of the 60s and 70s eventually crashed and burned, victim to the
ravages of time, drugs, egos, corporate bloat, and the encroachments of Disco
and punk.

The recent merger of the secular organization Center
for Inquiry (CFI) and the Richard Dawkins Foundation (RDF) has been dubbed atheism’s supergroup moment. Acknowledging the two organizations’ outsized
presence in the atheist world, Religion News Service acidly declared it a
“royal wedding”. The partnership, which
gives Richard Dawkins a seat on the CFI board, smacks of a vindication of
Dawkins’ toxic brand of damn-all-them-culturally-backward-Western-values-hating-
Muslims New Atheism. As one
of the most prominent global secular organizations, CFI’s all-white
board looks right at home with RDF’s lily
white board and staff.

Meanwhile, atheists and humanists of color have been
going against the white grain to address issues that much
of organized atheism and humanism are resistant if not outright hostile to. Last week, the Black Non-Believers
organization, the largest network of African American atheists in the country, celebrated its five-year anniversary in
Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by activist
Mandisa Thomas, the network is an antidote to the ostracism black atheists in
the Bible Belt and beyond experience, especially in the absence of supportive
secular institutions.

The intersection of racial segregation, economic
inequality and cultural identity is the reason why religious traditions
predominate in black communities. When
African Americans across the economic spectrum look to social welfare,
educational and civic organizations they are more often than not tapping into
those either provided by or connected to faith-based institutions. For example, at a recent Drew University
conference (named after pioneering African American physician and scientist Charles
Drew) I attended on resiliency and African American men, faith was
often cited as key to motivating young black men to pursue community leadership
and academics. High school students
spoke of getting mentoring and college readiness resources from their
congregations. In South Los Angeles, reentry programs that
provide jobs for formerly incarcerated black workers meet in and partner with
churches. In the absence of community,
job and recreation centers, churches offer stable physical space which simply
doesn’t exist elsewhere in most poor and working class communities of color. Simply put, churches—for good or ill—are a political
and social platform for people of color in the absence of the kind of secular
institutions that provide white people with political leverage, visibility, and
validation. Atheists who bash religion
but aren’t about the business of building social justice institutions that
provide alternatives to religious ones are just making noise.

The need for secular reentry initiatives is one
issue that will be taken up at this week’s Secular
Social Justice conference at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Featuring
atheist and humanist activists, educators and writers of color, the event is
the only secular conference to focus exclusively on racial, gender and economic
justice in communities of color without
apology or accommodation
to white folks’ let’s-ghettoize-this-into-a-diversity-panel reflex. From
the cultural relevance of feminism, to the impact of mass incarceration, the intersectional
activism of queer atheists of color and the neoliberal re-segregation of public
schools, progressive folk of color who also identify as atheist and/or humanist
are broadening the scope of atheist activism beyond merely challenging religious
prejudice.

LGBTQ queer Black atheists on Social Justice

But,
typically, mainstream media can’t seem to see atheists or atheist “activism”
unless it’s Dawkins or Sam Harris going on yet another Islamophobic atheist
rock star rant. Last year’s CNN show featuring the white atheist elite—the
most privileged among an already economically and racially privileged
class—reinforced the reductive anti-religious focus of mainstream atheism. Having the ability to claim the space of atheism
unabashedly, while being viewed as a secular authority, has everything to do
with race, gender, class, and sexual privilege.
It is precisely because Dawkins and company are not criminalized,
protected from the brunt of state violence due to their inhabitance of white
male cis bodies, that they’ve gained global credence as atheist paragons of
science and reason. Of course,
mainstream media will never be ready for the intersectional atheist organizing
represented by non-believers of color who’ve pushed the movement to go beyond
the safe platitudes of church state separation.
That would involve confronting the “revelation” that a humanistic atheism
demands more than simply non-belief, but a radical dismantling of the same old
social norms that center whiteness, maleness, straightness and private
enterprise as “secular” God substitutes.